The ratepayer's nightmare: Abandon all hope ye who enter here

Shanthini Naidoo tells of her grim encounter with the Great Joburg Billing Stuff-Up of 2009-10

A woman wearing a smart navy coat and boots is sitting at her desk in a corner of a dusty office. She looks unhappy to be there, and later on she will admit that she is.

Who can blame her? It is freezing in this building, one of the outposts of the Johannesburg municipality: the walls are unpainted and the floors are covered in misery-green lino circa 1954.

In her office, the municipal employee has been forced to bring in her own heater. It is connected over a ratty carpet with an extension cord, which is also attached to a kettle.

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There is a battered 2-litre Coke bottle filled with water, because the kitchen is a long, long way away. And she has a packet on her desk that holds her ration of toilet paper should she need to embark on the odyssey to the bathroom - which is ugly, but at least clean.

No wonder she is unhappy.

The woman's job is to handle the queries of angry, desperate ratepayers who have had their water or electricity cut off - the worst combination of middle- class ire possible.

Services they pay for which do not work properly or for which they have been wrongly billed. There are some who owe, but the office is mostly populated by those unable to escape The Great Joburg Billing Stuff-Up of 2009-10.

It began when the city migrated to a new billing system. Auditors later discovered the council had demanded almost R3-billion extra that it was not entitled to.

Six years later, the municipality is still fixing the errors.

Being at the offices as a cut-off customer is no picnic - but imagine spending 7.30am to 4pm in those rooms, which are piled high with yellowing documents being feasted on by all sorts of paper-eating creatures.

Each of the four customer services consultants has a stack of bills to sort out. Each could take days, and some go back years. Each represents someone who has no utilities or, at best, a malfunctioning account.

The official explains: "The new system was meant to link electricity, rates, refuse and water, but sometimes the systems were not talking to each other. About 80% of the bills are fine, but the 20% that were messed up were really messed up."

block_quotes_start I was prepared for the mandatory wasted time spent sitting in a queue before the consultants, most of whom seemed sleepy or disgruntled block_quotes_end

Which is why officials often shunt people from one consultant to the other, to foist the tangled mess of kilowatts and kilolitres on to someone else.

I should know: I am one of those who received a bill around February 2012 which amounted to a heart- (and it would turn out, water-) stopping bill of R26,000.

It mostly belonged to the property's previous owner, but despite the "system" and whichever sympathetic consultant I was allocated agreeing that I was not liable for the recon prior to moving in, the water was shut off. Repeatedly.

Every three months, for four years, come new baby, winter mornings, important meetings or blistering summer days. It meant having to lug 20-litre bottles back and forth from the garage or neighbours, and heating up and bathing out of buckets which, I concede, is a middle-class problem: I know this is a reality for millions of South Africans every day. That is a separate travesty.

For me, a diligent ratepayer, it meant repeated visits to the lady in the navy coat, and several of her predecessors. They would issue a hefty reconnection fee (25% of the bill = x, they would write) and then you would wait for 72 hours for reconnection, whether it was your fault or the city's. The actual bill was never amended.

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So, after cut-off episode No14, I decided to camp out at the offices I now knew so well.

I was prepared for the mandatory wasted time spent sitting in a queue before the consultants, most of whom seemed sleepy or disgruntled, often both, would call the supervisor over, who would then pass you on to the "ladies at the back" without actually resolving the problem.

Walk through the maze that leads to ladies at the back. No signs. It is dark, dank and dusty.

The first gatekeeper is the Reconnections Lady. She is disgruntled that her disgruntled colleague passed another customer on to her and she will do her utmost to not-help. The first time she not-helped, we were sent to the Jorissen Street branch's legal department, only to be told that she was the only person who could order a reconnection.

To be reconnected, an e-mail listing your cellphone number and address must be sent before 2pm. If this mammoth task is achieved, there's a slight chance of running water returning in the next day or two. If not, add 24 hours to your wait, unless you want to bribe the guys who did the reconnection. It entails removing a 50c piece blocking the flow from the meter.

The lady in the navy coat is a Customer Consultant, who sits next door to the Reconnections Lady. They work in tandem. One handles the query if it is legit, the other orders the reconnection.

Consultant Lady promises to handle the query and asks Reconnections Lady to send the e-mail. Reconnections Lady refuses, asking for a deeds office document - which is about as easy to find as a Dead Sea Scroll.

It took stinging tears from me, and the consultant admitting that the Manager can make her do it, to get it done. Reconnections Lady sends the e-mail ... reluctantly. I understand. She has to work here every day.

To actually fix the problem, I spend a day with the Customer Consultant and her three colleagues. They need documentation, lots of it. The "system" sometimes commits suicide from frustration and goes offline, until the IT guy comes to revive it. They share the heater, water and sweets which someone has brought in with me. There is no food vendor or vending machine in the building.

They share a grapefruit, and one of the lady's diet woes.

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Don't they want to get out? "Even the DA councillor doesn't come around any more. Maybe at election time. Things happen at election time, look there."

There is an infernal racket and more dust emanating from nearby. One part of the building is being renovated, but who will get the new offices is anyone's guess. "Maybe it will be nice like Sandton." "Is Sandton nice?" "I don't know, I have heard so," they banter. They get along well. Someone is planning a baby shower. One man is retiring after 37 years' service. He believes his pension is in order. I do hope so.

They have matric, some have further qualifications, all are council-trained. "You can't really work anywhere but for the council because, out there, they say council workers are lazy and have bad attitudes. It isn't true of everyone."

Why don't they complain to the union? "Everyone knows that joining Samwu means you get a promotion, especially if you make a noise. They won't do anything about the conditions, but the person will get a manager's seat. Otherwise, if you are ordinary and you complain, you get a disciplinary hearing."

That day I was in luck: the lady in navy is ready to assist. She sits with me and reverses each of the transactions, interest, duplicated sewerage fees, oh and we are on the wrong step count. Finally, after six hours, the years of errors have been collated and credited.

Tomorrow, she will have another tangle of numbers to unravel. If she is up to it.